The Cat

It started small. It started with bugs. I would step on them, smearing their guts on the ground with my shoe, or I would pick them up with my pointer finger and thumb and smush them that way. They didn't make any noise. Their lack of pleas for help fascinated me. It still does. Oftentimes when I would come inside after a day of playing, I would be covered in dead bugs. My mother never liked it. She would yell at me whenever it happened. I think she knew what I was going to become.

Then I moved to roadkill. It satisfied a similar urge, though it wasn't completely the same. The rarity of the roadkill was enough of a chase for the younger me. The main difference was that I didn't get to watch it happen. The deed was already done, so all I got to enjoy was the aftermath. It wasn't all bad, though. I learned basic anatomy. Usually that of opossums. I did my research and found that ethanol can be helpful in preserving organs. My Father always keeps some type of ethanol in the garage. My mother makes sure we have plenty of jars and containers in the house. I had all I needed right at my fingertips, and nobody had caught on.

Later in my life I graduated from roadkill and moved on to small animals. Squirrels, birds, stray cats. Those were more fun. They were harder to catch. This was the first time I had to plan. The first time I had to do any thinking ahead. With ants and roadkill, I could just pick them off of the ground. They couldn't do much protesting. These were different. These ran away from anything bigger than themselves. They caused me to have to research more than just their insides. My parents thought I had taken an interest in the environment, which wasn't completely wrong. I found out how to befriend cats, what a squirrel's favorite nut was, and the migration patterns of any bird I saw fly over my house. It was tiring and boring, but it was worth it.

The animal I had finally managed to catch was an old, black and white tuxedo cat, whose name I learned 2 weeks after. It didn't take me a long time to befriend the animal. Though it was awfully tedious, all I had to do was offer some treats and wait for it to come to me. When I got to the point that it let me hold it, I almost chose to leave it alone. But that would mean all my hard work would go to waste. So, I continued with my plan. I started carrying it to my house, where I had left a bowl of food and one of water out for the animal. I did that every day for about a week and eventually it started coming on its own. It got to the point where it would walk me to my bus stop every morning and wait for me to get home after school. I would give it a treat every time. My mother was happy that I had finally stopped taking such a morbid interest in animals and had started to craft wholesome relationships with them. She didn't know of my plan.

Exactly a week after the cat started walking me to my bus stop and waiting for me to get home, I did it. I took it inside my house. It was raining that day, so it must have been grateful. I let it roam around for a moment while I went into the kitchen and grabbed my father's fancy set of knives. I had never really gotten to take a good look at them before this. They were really beautiful. The blades were silver and the handles blue. I wasn't sure which would be the most effective for this, but it didn't really matter did it? They could all get the job done well enough.

The cat was clawing up our couch when I finished preparing. I made sure to ready my desk with a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, the knives I took from the kitchen, 3 jars, a bottle of ethanol, a gallon of water, a measuring cup, and my laptop open to a diagram of a cat. Not that I needed the diagram. I already knew perfectly well where everything was. I think it made me feel more professional. Like a surgeon or something. I always was an aspirational kid.

I brought the cat into my room and made sure he was comfortable before making the solution. Seven parts ethanol and three parts water. I placed the cat on the baking sheet, and it laid down almost obediently. I scratched it behind the ear one last time, feeling its purrs on my fingertips. It smiled at me. He smiled at me. That stupid cat smiled at me. He smiled at me. He trusted me. He put his poor little life in my hands and what did I do? I took it. I wrapped my filthy hands around the smallest knife I could and dug it into that poor little guy. He screamed. They had never done that before. Nothing I've ever killed has screamed before. I thought I could do it. I thought it would be okay but he just. Kept. Screaming.

I dropped the knife, sobbing. How could I have done this? I hurt him. I hurt my poor little Socks.

My mother must have heard all the noise. She burst into my room to see me covered in blood sobbing while both me and Socks were screaming. Then my mother started screaming.

Screaming, screaming, screaming. It's all I could hear. Mine and Socks's and my Mother's all wrapped up into one horrifying scream.

Socks stopped first. Not even five minutes after. My Mother's hands were squeezing my wrists. She pulled me into the bathroom, into the bathtub. She turned on the water and started washing the blood off of me. I could still only hear the screams.